Guests

Audience Questions

Audience QuestionsHour 1

Cliff recently bought a Motorola Moto-X for his wife. He's holding out for the Note 3. Leo says that the Galaxy Note 3 will be announced Sept 4th.

The problem is that they are an iPhone family, and text messages won't send via SMS. Leo says that to go into the person's contact entry and uncheck the box that says 'iMessage'. Then it'll go to SMS. Leo says that iMessage has a flaw that prevents it from knowing when to send a text as iMessage. Leo also says that this is part of Apple's way to keep users in the Apple ecosystem.

The chatroom says to sign out of her Apple ID in iMessage and Facetime.

Horatio wants to create a RAID for video editing, and he wants to know if the RAID provided by his Intel motherboard is good to use. Leo says that the RAID that is built into the motherboard is a software RAID called "BIOS RAID", and that's fine. But Leo says that a RAID card is more robust and better.

It depends what RAID configuration he uses. Striped RAID (RAID 0) is ok, but Leo calls it "scary RAID" and doesn't recommend it. There's also Mirrored RAID (RAID 1) which makes the same copies on other drives. Then there's RAID 5 which combines all drives as one, and has redundancy to keep him backed up. He'll need at least 3 drives in order to make that work. Leo is a fan of RAID 5 because if any drive dies, he can just replace it without losing any data.

Audience QuestionsHour 2

Robert would like to get a laptop or tablet that supports firewire. Leo says that the industry has moved away from FireWire in favor of USB 3.0. Even Apple, which was a huge proponent of Firewire has moved on from it. Robert could get a laptop that supports PCMCIA cards, and then he can get a Firewire card for it, but that's a feature that's also disappearing. Robert could also get a USB to Firewire adapter.

Kevin's son is heading off to college and he's looking at laptops, ultrabooks, and tablets. He's wondering what would be the best choice for an accounting major. Leo says that Lenovo running Windows 8 is a real good choice. He should get a touch screen. Leo likes the Acer Aspire S7. It's very thin and light. Don't go cheap, because it'll be his main education and entertainment tool. If he can, he should get a professional grade laptop.

Kevin's wondering about ultrabooks too. Ultrabooks are essentially a Windows version of the MacBook Air. Leo recommends going to the school bookstore to ask what computers the college recommends, and see if they are offering better deals through the book store. Should he get an i5 or i7 processor? Leo says that an i5 Haswell is ideal because it'll be great on battery power and will have great performance. An i7 would be overkill, in Leo's opinion.

Jean is getting a tablet computer for her birthday. She was thinking about getting the Surface RT. Leo says the only real advantage of the Surface RT is that it's been deeply discounted and has Windows Office built in. She'll still need to pay another $100 to get the type keyboard add-on. Unfortunately, though, the only Windows app that works on RT is Office. No other Windows based software can be installed on it.

Jean was also considering getting the Samsung Galaxy Tablet and then buy a laptop on Black Friday, but she wants to use it for spreadsheets. Leo says that there's no good app to do spreadsheets on Android, so in that regard, the Surface is a good choice. Leo says that given the price drop, if Jean invests in the Type keyboard add-on, she wouldn't need to buy an additional laptop. So for Jean, the Surface may be the ideal solution.

If she's going with a laptop/tablet pairing, then Leo recommends the Google Nexus 7 tablet. The screen is gorgeous. Then she can get the laptop she wants. If money were no object, that's what Leo would get.

Jane has a three year old MacBook running Snow Leopard, and CDs she gets from her doctors won't run on it. Leo says that Jane should make sure it's a CD, not a DVD. It may be that her drive doesn't support DVDs, just CDs. Leo says that the program needed was called "Rosetta," and that's an old emulator program designed to run older, proprietary software. Leo says Jane doesn't want to install that because OSX has moved beyond it. Leo recommends asking the doctor to install a program that works with modern Macs. But there may also be a Windows program and that's why they don't get a lot of complaints.

Leo also suggests just browsing around the folder to see if there's jpgs or movs and Jane can just open them with her Mac natively.

The chatroom found a free program called OsiriX Viewer, designed for opening these files. It will allow her to look at the DICOM images (images with a .dcm extension).

Audience QuestionsHour 3

Enrique has been keeping several Windows 98 machines running in order to run some old programs. Leo says he should run the software in compatibility mode or through virtualization software. He'll still need a Windows 98 install disc, but he can use VirtualBox for free, and install Windows 98 within a newer version of Windows.

Andrew's hard drive is starting to make a ton of noise. Leo says that's a sign that the hard drive is failing, and he needs to get the data off it and get a new hard drive. If the hard drive can't be read, Andrew has heard that he can freeze the hard drive and it'll make it run temporarily. Leo says it's a last resort and may just work, but he shouldn't be surprised if it doesn't. This is why it's so vital to backup.

Andrew could probably take it to DriveSavers to get the data off. They take apart the hard drive and put it in a new housing, but it can cost thousands.

Bob's wife is traveling to Italy on vacation and wants to know if she should bring her iPhone. Leo says that she could pay for an international data roaming plan. They're not cheap and the data caps are small, not to mention the cell call charges.

Another way is to turn off data roaming. She won't have data unless she has Wi-Fi access, like at her hotel. Some apps, like Google Maps, would allow her to cache data while away from Wi-Fi.

The third option is to have her carrier unlock her phone. They will likely do it if her account is in good standing. Then she could get a local SIM that she could put in her phone while she's there. The advantage of that is that she'll have a local number. The good news is that Bob's wife has an iPhone 5 which is a world phone and is unlocked. So she's good to go on that option. Leo advises going to this site for pay as you go Sim information in Europe.

Max has an iMac running Mountain Lion and iMovie doesn't allow him to play movies and it's running really slow. Leo recommends reinstalling iMovie. He should uninstall it, then go to the App Store and download and install it again. That often cures a lot of problems.

Arlene lives in a rural area and is stuck with dial-up. Leo says that one option is satellite internet from WildBlue. She'll have to pay for more equipment up front. The other option is cellular. If there's 4G access in her neighborhood, then that could also work. If not, then dial-up will be as good as it gets.

This is why Leo is an advocate of a "Tennessee Valley Authority" style project to wire the country for broadband. The TVA Rural electrification wasn't cheap, but it was well worth doing during the great depression. It's at the point now where having high speed internet is equally as important.

This Week in Tech News

Samsung announced the Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge today. The new phone includes an octacore Samsung Exynos processor (for the international version); 5.1-inch QHD Super AMOLED displays; 3GB of RAM; 32, 64, or 128GB of internal storage; 16-megapixel cameras with optical image stabilization; a new fingerprint sensor in the home button that no longer requires a swipe; an infrared heart-rate monitor that Samsung says also helps the camera obtain accurate white balance; integrated support for both Qi and PMA wireless charging; fast USB charging that’s 1.5 times faster than the Galaxy S5; a speaker that’s 1.5 times louder than the S5’s; and integrated support for Samsung Pay, which uses either NFC or MFT (LoopPay) technology for transactions. The S6 also has some notable changes including no interchangable battery, no waterproofing, and no microSD card slot. That means the storage capability is limited to 128GB models, and more or less forces users to buy more storage models in order to get more space.

Apple sent out invitations for an event in San Francisco on March 9 called "Spring Forward." We expect to get more details including pricing and availability of the Apple Watch. The event will be streamed live.

The FCC this week voted 3-2 to reclassify broadband providers as telecommunications companies. This gives the FCC the ability to regulate the internet. The FCC has tried to regulate internet service providers, but was thwarted by lawsuits. The courts agreed that the FCC had no right to regulate them unless they were telecommunications companies, not information companies. After considerable debate and 4 million comments to the FCC website, the FCC voted on Thursday to reclassify internet service providers as telecommunications companies.

Citizenfour is an Academy Award winning documentary on the story of Edward Snowden. He was a contractor for the NSA as a systems administrator working out of Hawaii, and that's how he was able to obtain information. What he did with that information is what became so controversial. He went to Hong Kong, and contacted journalists to give them this information he had collected, but didn't want anything released that would risk the lives of government operatives. Instead, he wanted journalists to tell the world, Americans in particular, what the NSA had been up to.

Edward Snowden's actions may be controversial, but what is not controversial is the material itself that had been leaked. It's Leo's opinion that he's done a very important thing -- he took something that was done in secret, without the permission of the American people, and brought that information to the forefront so we can have a national discussion about it.

Leonard Nimoy, known for playing "Spock" in Star Trek, passed away at the age of 83 on Friday morning. He died of end-stage chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. He announced he had the disease last year, attributing it to his years of smoking decades prior.